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Films Of The Year 2012

We usually have a thread for Albums of the year but I don't think we have had films of the year before, i think we should change it because putting things into lists at the end of the year is a pleasurable activity that many people like so yeah to kick us off here is mine. I have to warn you its quite blockbuster heavy this year since i didn't have the money or the location to see the more indie films unfortunately. Hopefully I'll catch up though some of them look interesting.

The Muppets

A lovely film has everything a film should have, great jokes that are silly and break the fourth wall and heartfelt emootions that make you cry. You feel good and aww after you watch it, also it has songs that sound almost exactly like Flight Of The Conchords songs what else do you need?
The Dark Knight Rises

I think people who disliked this didn't really get it to be honest, though I think the title should have really told everyone it should have been called gotham Rises because thats the theme how a city gets to fight for itself through one last hurrah. Its pretty bleak for a blockbuster and the last act is again a sit at the edge of your seat affair like Inception was. It is thought provoking and made me think about it for a long time afterwards. Though it probably could of cut about half hour from its running time.

The Avengers

The Yin to Rises Yang its basically just trying to have cool splash pages moments and entertaining big popcorn moments and it succeeds. great entertaining chracters funny and witty script and great action, probably the best fun movie in awhile shows how poor Transformers really was.

Skyfall

Taking cues from Dark Knight is this really good installment of Bond making it much more character driven and much more grounded though still nodding a lot to previous bonds. has some of the best fight and action scenes this year and it humanises Bond and M. It also has a great creepy turn from Bardem and a great two punch theme on Mothers and Digital versus old fashioned spycraft.
Prometheus

Despite its problems and despite it feeling like two films smashed together i really liked this film it has a nice thriller bombast to it and the second half is just full of horrible and exciting things. i can't wait to see it again with other scenes in it because I think it is an underrated gem, not perfect no but smart enough.

The Ambassador - This movie is incredible. In attempting to expose political corruption in the Central African Republic, Mads Brügger transformed himself into a gross caricature of the very behavior he was trying to capture. Equal parts compelling, exhilarating jaw-dropping and hilarious, The Ambassador is an incredible example of gonzo journalism at its finest.

Moonrise Kingdom - The film equivalent of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, with a hefty dose of bittersweet childhood romance.

The Raid: Redemption- Nevermind the fact that the English translation is an affront to intelligence; the film could be silent for all I care. Every film would be better with Mad Dog in it.

Looper - I'm a complete sucker for time travel movies. What Looper does well, however, is sidestep the heady logic behind that narrative device and focus on the human element. It helps that this is possibly Willis' best performance since Die Hard.

Cabin in the Woods - The only thing that has ever come close to justifying Joss Whedon's cult of fans. Yeah, I said it.

Holy Motors - Holy Motors is a film that, quite consciously, defies description. It's bizarre, incomprehensible, often incredibly boring - but to dismiss it would be to dismiss Lavant's career-defining performance, which is nothing short of incredible. It's an art house film for the most dedicated of film nerds, but when it hits its mark Holy Motors is mesmerizing.

Disappointments:

Prometheus - Ridley Scott once again fails to deliver a story that manages to be a fraction as compelling as his visuals. Damon Lindelof deserves to get blacklisted.

The Avengers - For all that hype, it's a ball of tropes, gags and one-liners smeared with a greasy layer of CGI. This film made me fat.

The Dark Knight Rises - Makes me wish that The Dark Knight hadn't ended on a cliffhanger. A sour mirror to the trilogy's first entry.

Just watched Cabin in the Woods a few nights ago. Can't see the appeal myself, making fun of yourself doing the same old boring thing is still just doing the same old boring thing. Then the ending, which could have been interesting was unimaginative and fell flat.

The Hobbit - an extremely fun movie whose last act is the best hour in the series so far. And HFR is amazing.

Cloud Atlas - super-ambitious movie that actually delivers on its promise. It's better than the book.

John Carter - Great pulp science-fiction. Reviewers trashing it for being outdated or having too many weird names totally miss the point.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - In this movie, a vampire throws a fucking horse at Lincoln, who catches it and then rides it. Also there's an Abraham Lincoln training montage. 100000000000000000000/10. Timur Bekmambetov is insane. As far as I'm concerned this is the definitive version of Abe and I want to believe it's based on a true story.

Hmmm, odds are that I've watched a film released this year (with the epicly quick DVD/Blu-Ray releases we now get), but I'd be hard pressed to name it. Shows what effect this years films have had on me.

Despite it's problems, and somewhat lack-luster story line, it was fine. The acting was decent, and I liked the newer feel on it. Despite my little issues with North Korea being a power capable of attacking the US, it was decent.

I didn't see enough films this year to make a fully qualified list(I no longer live in a big city with arthouse theaters, which sucks, as it means I have to wait until everythings on video to see it).

By far my favorite movie that I did see this year, though, was Kill List. I think it was technically released last year in England, but it didn't release in the USA until 2012 so I think it counts. It's a completely brilliant movie, though, that is one of those films that works best if you know absolutely nothing about it going it. I didn't know anything at all about it and it kind of blew my mind.

By far my favorite movie that I did see this year, though, was Kill List. I think it was technically released last year in England, but it didn't release in the USA until 2012 so I think it counts. It's a completely brilliant movie, though, that is one of those films that works best if you know absolutely nothing about it going it. I didn't know anything at all about it and it kind of blew my mind.

Have you heard about A Field In England? The plot description alone is enough to sell me on the movie.

I did hate The Dark Knight Rises. It was unnecessarily convoluted (even more so than Dark Knight), and absolutely none of the character's actions made any sense (I still don't understand Bane and Talia's motivation....they wanted to blow up all of Gotham, including themselves, because.....her dad, who she didn't have a great relationship with, kind of wanted to for vaguely unspecified reasons...or something...so she spends years living as someone else to pull off an elaborate scheme to....suicide bomb herself...or something), and much of it stretched plausibility, even for a comic book movie (people can't break their backs then start walking again two months later, even in comic books). But, even worse, it was just kind of boring. I could forgive all the silliness if it was an entertaining movie, but it wasn't. Unlike Dark Knight it didn't have any big character moments (nothing as awesome as the Batman/Joker interrogation scene) or action moments (Batman was barely even in the movie at all) so I really have no interest in ever seeing it again. I actually think it's maybe the worst movie Nolan has ever made.

I'm more forgiving of Prometheus, though. It had crazy plotholes, sure, and the characters were all idiots, but unlike BAtman it didn't take itself deathly serious (that alien abortion scene was one of the craziest things in a mainstream movie all year) and it had some entertaining moments and was basically just one big, silly, B-movie. Plus, it was incredibly pretty to look at and had impeccable CGI (it really was one of the more beautiful looking mainstream movies of the year).

I saw The Avengers and like most Marvel produced superhero films, it was entirely competent and not a bad movie or anything, but I immediately forgot the entire thing two hours after seeing it. Marvel is so obsessed with synergy and maintaining the complicated overall storylines of their film universe that no individual director, even Joss Whedon, can really do anything interesting with their franchises or put any sort of individual stamp on them (unlike, say, Ang Lee did with the original "Hulk"--which I've always thought was way underrated---or Sam Raimi did with Spiderman 2). So they basically just churn out competently made mediocrities like some sort of factory.

Life of Pi was disappointing to. It has beautiful 3D, but the overall message of the film was silly as hell (it reduces religious belief to a question of aesthetics...e.g. people should believe in God just because religious mythology is "prettier" than reality. Which is like the single weakest argument for the existence of God I've ever encountered. It makes the guy's claim at the beginning of the story that "you will believe in God after hearing it" laughably dumb....and I don't say any of this as an avowed athiest or anything. I love theology, which is what made me hate the film so much. It's the worst sort of shallow, new age, Oprah-esque, spiritualism).

Cabin in the Woods was awesome, though. Probably the best english language horror film since "The Descent." And I liked Moonrise Kingdom even if it didn't blow me away as it's a good movie, but kind of a paint-by-numbers Wes Anderson movie, so really nothing we haven't seen before.

Looper left me kind of cold, too. It has an awesome first 30 minutes or so, in which it goes through all the work of setting up its complicated rules of time travel....only to abandon them in the second half to become a weird sort of Omen clone about a kid with crazy telekinetic powers. It felt like two different movies awkwardly smashed into one, neither of the movies were bad, per se, but it didn't seem like they needed eachother or really fit (especially since the second half is so loaded with cliches, while the first half is so daring and original).

Think Skyfall wins it for me, basically the best modern Bond film we could hope for, finally allowing Judi Dench the screentime she deserves. Javier Bardem makes a great villain too, although I kind of wish he had more screen-time with Daniel Craig - I felt maybe they could have explored the 'this could be you' angle in a bit more depth and made it a more enticing prospect.

Avengers and Dark Knight Rises were for me decent enough films, but neither of them stayed long in the memory, I generally love Christopher Nolan's and Joss Whedon's work, so maybe they were both slightly disappointing in that context.

Also actually, I hated the endings of both DKR and Skyfall, both felt like maybe they could leave their endings a little ambigous, but instead went for spelling things out in bright pink neon letters. I'll stop there for fear of spoilers though.

The Hobbit kind of surprised me by being rather good actually, sure it was bloated with unecessary moments, suffered from strange tonal shifts and ended up a bit disjointed. But quite frankly I'm happy to trek though middle-earth with Peter Jackson for as long as he wants, I thought Martin Freeman was excellent in it as well.

I still need to see both Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained, both of which are being raved about by the critics, I thought Inglourious Basterds was awful self-congratulatory shit, so it will be interesting to see if Django works for me, or whether i'm officially over Tarantino.

Finally, the worst film I have seen this year is Seeking a friend for the end of the world. It was Shit. Like, really shit. Possibly the least convincing on-screen romance I've ever seen with Ikea Knightly and Steve Carrell both woefully miscast. 0 Chemistry, I was glad when the world ended. I just wish we'd got to see them die, I felt like I needed some kind of reward after sitting through that pile. -10/10.

I really liked Moonrise kingdom. And the calvin & Hobbes analogy is pretty much spot on.
I fairly enjoyed Argo. it's quite entertaining, yet sufficiently smart.
I think that skyfall was one of the most decent James Bond movies so far.
I am mitigated by The Dark Knight Rises. It's somewhat good, but it almost seems to me that it took some overdone things off the james bond franchise. I also concur with Jockie about the bright pink neon letters spelling at the end of both movies, in both cases it might have been a tad more subtle.

Well the thing is is that it was obviously a great neon sign for the people in the audience who hadn't got it(it is a blockbuster after all) I thought it could be more subtle but eh.

I forgot to include Looper actually and I don't know why, I loved that film and it had many many great moments in it with very interesting story to it and to be honest if your at all worried about the time travel making sense your watching this and most other time travel movies wrong(except 12 Monkeys)

Well the thing is is that it was obviously a great neon sign for the people in the audience who hadn't got it(it is a blockbuster after all) I thought it could be more subtle but eh.

I forgot to include Looper actually and I don't know why, I loved that film and it had many many great moments in it with very interesting story to it and to be honest if your at all worried about the time travel making sense your watching this and most other time travel movies wrong(except 12 Monkeys)

You're probably right, but I expect better of Nolan, I mean, the ending of Inception was brilliant precisely because it left viewers to come to their own conclusions and didn't feel the need to spell things out for its audience.

I think people who disliked this didn't really get it to be honest, though I think the title should have really told everyone it should have been called gotham Rises because thats the theme how a city gets to fight for itself through one last hurrah. Its pretty bleak for a blockbuster and the last act is again a sit at the edge of your seat affair like Inception was. It is thought provoking and made me think about it for a long time afterwards. Though it probably could of cut about half hour from its running time.

I have to disagree here. We barely see anything about the people of Gotham. There is so much that could have been done. We could have seen what happened with the 'Kangaroo courts' and how the people of Gotham would try and rule themselves, and whether this would shatter or reinforce Talia's view of a decadent city. If anything the people are portrayed quite poorly. We see them looting mansions with Catwoman. The military will not allow a bus of orphaned children to leave the city. The prisoners readily join Bane's army. The police chief will not join Batman until the very end. The only people who fight are Batman and the police when they are eventually freed. Gotham does not redeem itself like it did in The Dark Knight's boat scene.

Please argue with me because I wanted to like this film so bad! I think my main problem is the lack of a message and theme. Batman Begins was about fear, anonymity and the nature of criminality. The Dark Knight was about chaos, escalation and human nature - will Batman, or Gotham, kill to save lives? The Dark Knight Rises was about... renewal? A fresh start?